


sick as dogs

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, M/M, broken limbs and the flu, grown men can't cope with colds, unintentional nursemaid!Thorin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: “You’re both terrible at looking after yourselves, I hope you know that,” Thorin told them, before Bilbo had a chance to protest. In fairness, given the last few hours, he probably couldn’t object all that much – and right now he didn’t have the energy to even try.In which Bilbo is ill, Bofur can't move, and Thorin is stuck making the tea.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katajainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/gifts).



> For katajainen - hope you all enjoy, and happy holidays!

When Bilbo got the phone call, he was already starting to feel pretty shitty.

Not emotionally, he would hasten to clarify – or at least, no more emotionally shitty than any illness makes you feel – but simply full of cold. That horrible, nose-clogging, face-numbing, limb-aching kind of cold that felt as bad as flu, but could only be treated with tea and sleep. Which was exactly what he had been planning on doing, in all honesty – he worked his own hours, and had already emailed his editor saying that he would be out of touch for the next week. He had planned to get a delivery of groceries, and to spend that week curled up on his sofa napping and generally feeling sorry for himself.

He was in the middle of deciding whether he would prefer lemon or blackcurrant lemsip (both terrible tasting) when the phone rang.

It was Bofur’s name flashing on the screen, so he answered it without hesitation, prepared to launch into a lengthy complaining session about his less than stellar health, only to cut himself short at the unfamiliar woman’s voice coming down the line.

“Mr Baggins?” she asked, and he nodded, surprised, before realising that she couldn’t see him.

“Yes, yes it is,” he replied, a thousand terrible thoughts running through his head. What had happened to Bofur; what terrible thing had occurred that meant a strange woman was calling him from his phone?

Bilbo had known Bofur for nearly ten years, and this would not be the first time that he had ended up in a stupid situation. He was impulsive, and often ended up doing daft things that left him with minor injuries – agreeing to go free-climbing with no experience; deciding to stay out for just one more drink and then taking a stupid shortcut home; taking up a dare to jump in the city canal in the middle of winter. But all of these had only left him with the most minor of scrapes and bruises – and Bilbo had only learned about them the next time he saw Bofur.

“Your friend put you down as his emergency contact when he was brought into A&E – he’s asleep at the moment, but we needed to call you to inform that you will need to collect him or arrange a taxi in the next couple of hours, once he has woken up. Are you able to do that?”

“Of course,” Bilbo replied, “But what happened?”

“Oh,” the woman – who Bilbo assumed was a nurse or doctor – said, taken aback. “My apologies, I assumed that someone had already been in touch. You do not need to worry, Mr Baggins – your friend has broken his leg in a minor accident. We have set it and cast it, and given him some pain relief in the interim. He is absolutely fine, but he will need some help getting around in the next week or so, until he gets used to his crutches.”

“I see,” Bilbo answered, his lovely mental image of a week under piles of blankets rapidly disappearing before his eyes.

It really wasn’t a problem though, and he didn’t hold any resentment over it – after all, Bofur had stepped in to help Bilbo on a number of occasions, mostly to do with inquiring relatives. He thanked the nurse and hung up the phone, abandoning his shopping order as he searched for his keys. His dizziness ruled out driving, and he hesitated for a moment before calling a taxi – Thorin wouldn’t pick up any calls until after work, which was still a few hours away.

Traffic was dire, and Bilbo was half asleep by the time the taxi finally reached the hospital, his nose running quite unpleasantly – the nurses were quite unimpressed with him until he explained that he had come to collect a friend rather than waste their time and energy on a common cold. Bofur had woken back up, and he was only waiting ten minutes or so until they brought him out, sat in a wheelchair, his leg in a full cast propped up rather precariously as Bofur waved at him cheerfully. He waited until the orderlies had helped Bofur into another cab to begin berating him.

“It’s not my fault!” Bofur protested, already leaning heavily against Bilbo, half-asleep again. “My neighbour needed help moving a piano – we got it nearly all the way into the apartment before I slipped and dropped it onto my leg!”

“You broke your femur in two places,” Bilbo reminded him, as gently as he could whilst trying not to cough. “And your tibia. Next time, call some movers.”

“Waste of money, babe,” Bofur muttered, as he closed his eyes. “Nothing wrong with helping friends.”

That was typical of Bofur, Bilbo couldn’t help but think as he too closed his eyes, unwilling to fight any longer against the overwhelming exhaustion that the brief foray into the outside world had left him with. Bofur was always willing to go too far to help the people that he cared about – that was one of the things that he had always loved the most about him.

He wasn’t sure how long it took them to get home – the price of the cab was far higher than it should have been, but since the driver woke them both up and helped them get Bofur through the front door of Bofur’s cosy little terraced Victorian house, he didn’t complain. Once the two of them were down, taking a sofa a piece with Bofur’s leg propped gently up along the length of his, Bilbo fought off his overwhelming urge to nap and tapped out a supermarket order on his phone for immediate delivery. Bilbo was quite glad that Bofur had fallen immediately back to sleep – he had a bad habit of insisting on the inclusion of more and more ridiculous snack food, and Bilbo was feeling far too ill to stave off the impressive effect of his puppy-dog eyes.

And he really was starting to feel quite terrible, actually. Far worse than he had originally thought he would. The prospect of looking after Bofur for at least the next week was feeling more and more impossible, though of course he would never call it quits, not on Bofur – after all, if Bilbo didn’t intervene, Bofur would spend the next week with his front door unlocked for delivery men, existing solely on pizza and diet Pepsi.

Not the healthiest of diets.

He managed to stay up long enough to accept the delivery and make himself a cup of tea; he roused himself for just about long enough to slice some vegetables for a quick stir-fry, at which point he began to feel rather dizzy and took a strategic seat on the linoleum. He was only planning on closing his eyes for a moment or so.

Good intentions, and all that.

It was dark outside by the time he woke up, quite abruptly, as someone lifted him unceremoniously into their arms.

“Idiot passed out on the kitchen floor,” a very familiar voice said as he was carried back into the living room. “Lucky he didn’t crack his damn head open.”

“Did not,” Bilbo protested, somewhat disorientated by the sudden lurch into wakefulness. “Sat down sensibly and took a nap.”

“On the kitchen floor?” Bofur replied as Bilbo was dumped onto the sofa that he had vacated several hours before.

“Shush,” Bilbo responded, as a cool hand was placed on his forehead.

“Hullo, Thorin,” he said, tilting his head back so that he could see the other man, standing just behind him. Thorin was frowning – which was not entirely out of the ordinary for him – and looking rather concerned, which was perhaps a much rarer phenomenon.

“You’re running a fever,” he remarked. “How long have you been ill?”

“Just a couple of days,” Bilbo mumbled as Thorin pulled a blanket over him. “What are you doing here?”

Thorin was still scowling as he took Bilbo’s glasses off his face - he was rather surprised that they had survived in place for as long as they had.

“Bofur called me when he woke up – he could see your feet through the kitchen door but you weren’t answering him when he called out for you.”

“Thought you were dead,” Bofur remarked, rather cheerily. “You didn’t tell me you were ill, you nugget.”

“You’re both terrible at looking after yourselves, I hope you know that,” Thorin told them, before Bilbo had a chance to protest. In fairness, given the last few hours, he probably couldn’t object all that much – and right now he didn’t have the energy to even try.

 

* * *

 

The next time he woke up it was a much less abrupt thing – it was one of those soft and gentle awakenings, smothered in blankets, to the muffled sound of the kettle boiling. There was a slight cramp in his leg from being curled up on the sofa, and the slightly unpleasant sensation of having slept in the clothes that he had spent all of yesterday in. His head was still quite terribly fuzzy, and he couldn’t really remember how he had ended up on this sofa, which was definitely not his – but right now he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

“Tea?” he called, hopefully, from beneath his blanket pile, before descending into coughing.

“You need to quit smoking,” came Bofur’s voice, from somewhere close by.

“I need to stop doing talks in primary school,” he responded. “Every time I do I end up with some horrendous lurgy.”

Bofur snorted in amusement, and Bilbo finally surrendered to the inevitable wakefulness that had forced itself upon on. Bofur was grinning at him from the other sofa, his cast already covered in a bizarre array of marker-pen doodles. It was the sight of said cast that finally forced the events of the preceding day through the fuzz of his mind, and Bilbo groaned, pulling a cushion over his head.

“I feel like death,” he mumbled into the fabric.

“You look it too,” came Thorin’s voice.

Bilbo pulled the cushion back away, only so that he could glare at Thorin, though his grumpiness was somewhat assuaged by the large cup of tea that Thorin had placed on the coffee table next to him. There was no question that it was for him – it was one of a matching pair that Thorin had bought for Bilbo and Bofur after a rather questionable drunken online shopping rampage. He hadn’t been going to give them at all, rather too embarrassed at them in the cold and sober light of day, but his younger brother had found them, and had, of course, insisted on giving them over. Once Thorin had gotten over his initial humiliation at Bilbo and Bofur’s glee, he had taken to using them with some regularity.

The matching mug was already in Bofur’s hands, and Bilbo smiled even through his haze at the small succulent painted onto the enamel, right above the rather charming sentiment, ‘aloe you vera much’.

He hadn’t expected Thorin to be quite as much of a sap as he was – in fact, when Bofur had first introduced him to the rather stern business consultant he hadn’t liked him particularly. Thorin had a way of growing on you, though – he lacked Bofur’s easy affability and Bilbo’s ability to talk to anyone, even when he did not particularly want to. But his cool front was a front for a good heart and a good heap of social anxiety, and once he was comfortable around you, he became a rather terribly sentimental old idiot. He had slipped into the relationship Bilbo and Bofur had already shared with ease – they had always been open and honest with each other about what they wanted and needed, and both had always known that there would be no issues with bringing someone else into their relationship, as long as both of them were happy and comfortable.

Which they had been – and still were.

Bilbo reached for his tea, wincing as his head began to pound at the movement, only to scowl at the smell coming off the mug – something distinctly medicine-y, rather than tea-y.

“Hey,” he protested as Thorin flopped into the armchair between the two sofas. “What’s with this? I need my tea in the mornings.”

Thorin opened one eye, and somehow still managed to make it intimidating.

“Drink your honey and lemon, then eat something, then you can have your caffeine hit.”

Bilbo debated, for just a moment, whether to argue or not, before remembering that trying to do so with Thorin was inevitably a waste of time and energy. The honey-and-lemon would have to suffice in the meantime (though he would remember this next time Thorin asked for a scotch – he would receive a non-alcoholic beer in response).

“What time is it?” he asked, after his first sip, though he nearly spat out his second mouthful after Thorin replied.

“Quarter to midday.”

“Why aren’t you at work?”

Thorin’s face contracted for a moment into an expression that indicated that he would be rolling his eyes if they had only been open. He did look rather tired, Bilbo realised after his fished his glasses from the table and pulled them on – far more tired than he should have been, given that he and Bofur had probably both been unconscious by seven in the evening.

“Did you stay up all night in the armchair to watch us?”

Thorin’s expression immediately altered into something deeply sheepish.

“No?” he proffered.

“Thorin,” Bofur groaned. “You do understand that you are not allowed to tell us that we don’t know how to look after ourselves when you yourself sat up all night on a very uncomfortable armchair just to make sure that we were okay – when you know full well that all we were going to do for the rest of the evening was sleep, and probably not move in the slightest.”

Thorin, to his credit, did not reply, as was his nature – he just sank deeper into his armchair and folded his arms across his chest, clearly unwilling to engage with that particular line of argument.

Bless Thorin, Bilbo couldn’t help but think – you give him an old bowl to look after, and he’ll carry it around with him, wrapped in bubble-wrap, even if he doesn’t see any value in it, just because he knows that you do. When it came to people and things that he did see the worth in, that he did care about – well, the man was pretty much unstoppable.

“So you took the day off work?” he interjected, feeling just a little flattered that Thorin – Thorin who wouldn’t take Christmas day off unless his siblings came and physically trapped him in the house – would take the day to look after them.

“The week,” Thorin replied, still not meeting their gaze. “Bofur, you need help getting around, and Bilbo, you’re too ill to manage it by yourself.”

Bofur winked, somewhat licentiously, though the corners of his mouth were tugging upwards into a rather small, soft little smile of affection. Bilbo could tell that there was a joke in there that Bofur was struggling not to release – no doubt something along the lines of the other ways that Thorin could help Bofur get to places (innuendo very much intended),but he was clearly trying not to blurt it out right now.

“Seriously though,” Bofur remarked, after a moment of awkward silence. “Can you actually afford to take that much time off work?”

Thorin shrugged, unconcerned.

“I can for you two,” he said, and then, after a particularly long pause, “Idiots.”

Bilbo hid his smile behind his mug, and tried very hard to suppress the blush that was building at the back of his neck.

 

* * *

 

 

The rest of the day passed slowly; Bofur’s pain meds knocked him out cold, and when Bilbo began to doze off too Thorin took out his laptop, the gentle and rhythmic sound of his fingers on the keyboard lulling him into a gentle doze, his headache and dizziness fading out to a dull throb as he drifted slowly in and out of consciousness. He could hear the soft snuffles that Bofur always made when he slept, and realised, in a slow and lazy way, that it had been rather a long time since the three of them had spent any day like this – it was rather a shame that illness and broken bones had to be involved for any of them to relax for any extended period of time.

He was woken, after a while, by the sound of Thorin singing from the kitchen, a soft and gentle song in his native tongue, something that Bilbo could not understand the words to but liked hearing none the less. Bofur had moved positions since last Bilbo had paid attention, and his hair was damp – Bilbo wondered, half-heartedly, how they had managed to do that without getting his cast wet, before he was distracted by the sound of Thorin coming closer.

“What is it?” Bilbo asked as he caught sight of the tray that his boyfriend was carrying. Thorin glanced at him with a rather disconcerting combination of incredulity and disappointment.

“It’s food, you moron,” he told him, affectionately.

Bilbo recoiled somewhat as the tray was placed on the table between himself and Bofur.

“You didn’t make it, did you?”

Bofur snorted, but covered it up quickly with a wince. Thorin stared at the both disdainfully for a moment before sinking down into the armchair.

“I don’t want to add food poisoning to your list of complaints,” he replied. “I called Dis and Viv – and luckily they were willing to provide.”

“God bless your sister and her wife,” Bilbo remarked as he pulled the tray over to him, reaching for a bowl of steaming soup – he could no longer smell anything, his nose was so blocked, but he had no doubts that it would have been delicious. Thorin’s brother and sister were both excellent cooks: they had clearly inherited all those skills, leaving Thorin with none at all.

“Not chicken?” Bofur asked, a little sadly. Thorin snorted.

“No matzah either,” he countered. “Viv said that something spicy would be better for Bilbo’s cold.”

“Well, can’t complain about that,” Bofur replied, as Thorin passed him his bowl. Bilbo couldn’t help but agree, even if the intense chilli in the dish was already making his nose stream horrendously.

Food consumed, and some energy regained, Bilbo could not help but want to be somewhat cleaner than he was – when he mentioned as much, Thorin jumped to his feet and dashed off to draw Bilbo a bath – complete with tea tree oil to help with his congestion, because Thorin was nothing but thorough in everything that he did. It was one of the qualities about him that was simultaneously endearing and, on occasion, deeply annoying.

“I brought you clothes,” Thorin told him, with a grin, as he came back into the room some moments later with a sizeable bag in his hands. “Pyjamas, mostly, since you won’t need to leave the house for anything. Nipped around to your house whilst you were napping this morning. Got that special tea that you like from your kitchen, and that shampoo that you insist is better than any other brand, and slippers as well.”

“You’re an angel,” Bilbo told him, reaching for the bag and dumping the contents out on the blankets around him, not too concerned about keeping tidy when the prospect of clean clothes was in reach. And look, perfect – his favourite paisley pyjama set, and the nice blue cotton one too that had been washed so many times it had been worn down to a perfect level of softness, and-

“What are these?”

Thorin’s grin made far more sense now. For in the bag were not his normal slippers – lovely old leather slip-ons with a cosy faux-fur lining, perfect for padding about the house in – oh no. In the bag were the monstrosities that Lobelia had given him just a couple of weeks ago, that he had shoved under his bed in the hopes of never seeing them again.

“Bilbo!” Bofur crooned. “Why have we never seen those before? They are just perfect!”

Bilbo glared at the pink, fluffy rabbit slippers that were currently occupying his lap.

Why, indeed.

Thorin was still grinning, and Bofur was too, both of them clearly remembering with some glee the affectionate – but deeply embarrassing nickname – that an acquaintance of theirs had once given Bilbo, that they had never let him live down since.

“Little bunny,” Thorin muttered, quiet enough that Bilbo almost didn’t hear him.

“You’re both so mean,” Bilbo retorted. “Here I am, an invalid, and you mock me.”

He left the room to the sound of their laughter, making his way somewhat unsteadily up the stairs to enjoy the most glorious bath of his entire life – and Bilbo could almost forgive Thorin for the slippers when he got out of the bath to find that his favourite pyjamas had been hung up on the radiator in the hallway – so great indeed was the feeling of drying off and slipping into toasty warm, clean pyjamas that he even, with a great sigh, put the slippers on too.

He had some revenge, however, when he returned downstairs to his blanket nest.

“Fuck fuck fuckity fuck!” came the shouting from the kitchen just moments after he had dived back beneath the warmth of the blankets, dry-swallowing the ibuprofen that Thorin had left out for him.

Bilbo raised his eyebrows at Bofur, who spat a marker pen lid out from between his teeth so that he could respond.

“He’s slicing more lemons for your tea,” he told him, mildly. “But he’s forgotten that he scraped his hands trying to help me up the stairs earlier.”

Bilbo stared at Bofur for a long moment, until the mild face finally cracked, and Bofur grinned.

“You’re a terrible person,” Bilbo reminded him, before Bofur had even finished laughing. “But there is a very sweet vindication at the sound of his shrieking.”

 

* * *

 

 

The first couple of days passed with little incident: Bofur, always doing something with his hands whether or not he was at work as a graphic designer, was bored out of his mind, but Thorin did his best to find things for him to do that would keep him entertained. He stopped using the painkillers very quickly, claiming that he didn’t enjoy the fuzzy head he got after them, and he and Thorin bickered somewhat about that, and whether Bofur was being irresponsible or not – Bilbo tended to zone out of that, at that point. He himself was still rather distressingly

He himself was still rather distressingly ill, and was struggling to focus for any extended length of time. His hacking cough was getting more manageable with Thorin's insistence on ten cups of honey-and-lemon per day, but his dizziness had barely abated, 

The three of them kept to the living room for the most part – the steep steps were hard for Bofur to manage, and since there was a downstairs bathroom it didn’t seem worth the hassle of moving him and up down every day. Neither Bilbo nor Thorin particularly wanted to leave him, either – they were both perhaps a little too concerned at the prospect of Bofur needing something at the night, and him being unable to move. Had Bilbo moved upstairs, then Thorin wouldn’t have slept at all, moving constantly between the two – besides, Bofur’s large and squishy sofas were particularly comfortable, and he had enough blankets to suffocate in if he really wanted to (not that he did).

So they were, for the most part, comfortable – or at least they had appeared to be, until today. Bofur had been fidgeting all morning, a look of discomfort on his face, and rather than complaining like any normal person, he had quite clearly been holding it in, even though Thorin and Bilbo were very much aware of his irritation.

“What on earth is the matter?” Bilbo asked, exasperated, after too long a period of time watching Bofur squirm uncomfortably on the sofa, his hands flitting with careful frustration across the surface of his cast, the white plaster nearly entirely obscured now by colourful doodles.

“You look really uncomfortable,” Thorin chipped in when Bofur did not immediately answer.

The normally chipper man was looking distinctly annoyed at this stage, every movement partially aborted as he remembered his cast, physically limited but clearly too irritated to possibly let it go.

“You sort of look like you’ve got screwed one too many times and now can’t sit comfortably.”

There was a moment of shock as both Bilbo and Bofur stared at Thorin’s unexpected interjection, until Bilbo burst out laughing. Bofur, quite uncharacteristically, stuck out his bottom lip, making him look surprisingly young. After all these years, this was the most childish and sulky he had ever seen Bofur look, and it made Thorin start laughing too.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he managed to gasp out to Bilbo after a moment.

“It’s my damn leg,” Bofur protested. “It itches!”

That didn’t stop them; in fact, it only got worse when Bofur tried to swing himself around to berate them properly, forgetting entirely his cast in the process. He ended up half falling off the sofa with the weight of the cast pinning his leg back against the sofa.

“Oh shut up, the pair of you! Find a way to help me rather than mocking me, you awful, awful men!”

Thorin spluttered, and reached for his hand, squeezing it gently.

“But mocking you is more fun.”

Bofur glared at him.

“Help me, or else I’ll wake you both up multiple times throughout the night so you can help me get to the bathroom.”

Thorin turned to Bilbo with a look of mock-outrage on his face.

“The sooner those crutches arrive the better.”

Bofur continued to pout, his puppy-dog eyes coming out to full effect until Thorin groaned and pushed himself to his feet, striding off to the kitchen.

“Alright, I’ll find you something.”

He came back almost immediately, brandishing something distinctly threatening in his hands, before proffering it with a rather sarcastic bow to Bofur.

“A kebab skewer?” he asked, incredulously.

“Just don’t accidentally stab yourself in the leg, please. I really don’t want to have to go back to A&E and explain that I let my idiot boyfriend sever an artery because he was itchy.”

Bofur wasn’t really listening: he had already shoved the long, fine rod down the cast and was sighing contentedly as he moved it back and forth in a breathy way that reminded Bilbo distinctly of the noises that Bofur often made in bed – which made him wonder just _how_ satisfying it was for him to be scratching that itch.

No innuendo intended.

That time. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Guess what arrived?” Thorin asked, coming into the living room with a long box under his arm. Bilbo eyed it warily, but Bofur let out a cheer of delight, reaching for it – Thorin kept it out of his reach for the meantime, opening them up to reveal a pair of crutches. They had been waiting six days for their arrival from the hospital at this point, and by now Bilbo’s cold had reduced itself to a mere series of headaches and snuffles, though he still felt as though he had done three rounds in a boxing ring and that he needed at least six weeks’ worth of sleep.

It was already quite late into the evening – the delivery had been entirely unexpected, though not welcome, and Bilbo was already quite tired. But he roused himself enough to watch with some amusement as Thorin hefted Bofur to his feet, and the two of them struggled to get Bofur onto his feet again.

“I’d help you,” Bilbo remarked as Bofur nearly knocked Thorin onto his arse as he swayed on his good foot. “But I am far too lazy, and it is also awfully entertaining to watch you struggle.”

Thorin glared at him, but Bofur was beaming, too happy to be back on his feet – and it was surprising just how quickly he got into the swing of things. Within an hour he was moving around the sofas with ease, though the exertion of it was evident in his expression, which was growing more and more tired by the moment. Bilbo couldn’t bring himself to criticise – it felt just too pleasant to watch him, and that wide grin.

“I think it is time to tackle the stairs,” Bofur said, eventually, his smile completely delighted – that same wild and reckless sort of grin that had got him into so much trouble in the past. It was too soon, of course it was, but he was already bursting with the determination that neither he nor Thorin were every able to deny.

And Bofur knew it.

“Come on,” he said, still beaming. “You two stand behind me, catch me if I fall, and if I make it to the top then we all get to sleep in the bed tonight.”

And they did – and my god, it was a blissful feeling, cuddling down under warm and heavy covers, cool pillows against his cheek, his face pressed against Bofur’s shoulder and Thorin’s arm thrown across them both. It had been quite a feat making it up the stairs, and there had been a couple of moments when Bilbo was convinced that they would all end up back in A&E with several more broken bones between them, but in the end they made it to the upstairs landing, and then into Bofur’s bedroom, where the three of them had spent so many wonderful nights and lazy mornings. Then they had fallen into bed, the three of them, and not in the impassioned way that they so often did, but instead in the blissful way of three very exhausted people who were very desperate to lie out flat in the shared warmth of entwined bodies, the comfort of home, the joyous way of people who love each other.

“You’ve been a wonderful nursemaid,” Bofur whispered, his voice still full of smiles, to Thorin. “We both appreciate it, and will buy you one of those horrible sexy nurse Halloween costumes in honour of your bravery.”

Thorin huffed a laugh, before grunting, and stretching out.

“Never let me sleep in an armchair for a week again,” he groaned into his pillow. “My back is wrecked.”

Bofur huffed a quiet laugh, and dragged them both closer.

“Thank you, both of you, for being here this week.”

“You’re more than welcome,” Thorin replied, with a sincerity and love in his voice that warmed Bilbo more than any number of blankets could have done.

“Aloe you vera much,” Bilbo mumbled, to them both, as he fell into the most comfortable sleep he had had all week.


End file.
